If you’re skating by with older PCs, you’re making yourself vulnerable to a myriad of potential problems. It’s time for a tech refresh—here are three reasons to invest in new PCs sooner rather than later.

Increased Security Risk

To a hacker, your SMB is low hanging fruit—they know you’re likely to have a smaller tech budget and therefore, older technology or gaps in your infrastructure. According to Verizon’s 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report, 61 percent of data breach victims are businesses that employ less than 1,000 people. Running protective software on old hardware is significantly less effective than running it on newer computers that are designed to work with firewalls, anti-viral and anti-spam applications.

Investing in new laptops that are designed to make life difficult for hackers is the foundation of data and infrastructure security—and considerably less expensive than the loss of revenue, customers and reputation that results from a security breach. It’s important to remember that when it comes to security, you have everything to lose while cybercriminals have everything to gain. With a few key strokes, hackers can destroy the business you’ve worked to build for years in a matter of hours.

Productivity Stagnation

Fun fact—your employees are sick of hitting Ctr+Alt+Delete more times than they can count in a day. You hold them responsible for staying productive and getting their work done by the deadline, but are you setting them up for failure by not giving them the tools they need to make that possible? If your PCs are more than three years old, chances are, the answer is yes. According to Techaisle, old PCs cost businesses 42 hours of productivity loss. How many dollars per hour does that translates to, especially for your higher-salaried employees?

Maintaining old PCs is significantly more expensive than replacing them, especially when they are stretched 2-3 years beyond their intended lifecycle. Instead of thinking of out-of-pocket costs, consider how much time and money you’ll spend repeatedly fixing the same failing computers.

Negative Brand Perception

Whether your employees are customer-facing or you have a client-service model, fledgling technology is bad for business. “Bear with me I’m waiting for my computer to load,” is not a great representation of your brand and even worse if your clients expect to hear that when they call or come in for service. Your clients’ time is valuable as is your employees’ time—stop wasting it by holding on to old PCs.

Failing technology gives your competition an edge up. How do you plan on winning major accounts if you can’t even replace your business development team’s laptops? If you’re not going to invest in your business, why should they? Don’t shoot yourself in the foot—giving your team the right tools is less expensive than losing major contracts.

If you want to win, you have to align your technology with your future—computer upgrades are the first step. You’re probably thinking “easier said than done,” but it’s possible for even the smallest businesses with the tightest budgets. If you can’t afford to outfit your entire team with new laptops, work with a managed service provider to see how they can help you procure new technology for a fraction of the price.